Public Understanding and Education Decision-Making

Abstract

Decisional participation is legitimated at least in part through its sub stantive or factual basis. The disparity between the public's stock of education-relevant facts and the professional's is a source of recurring tension. This article examines some evidence about public understand ing of education policy, compares it to similar understandings of other public policy fields, and discusses some of the steps that may be taken to deal with the prevailing levels of understanding. Dale Mann is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Administration at Teachers College, Columbia University and a faculty associate of the Teachers College/Educational Testing Service Joint Institute on Urban and Minority Education.